Systems were separate entities and didn’t interact with each other 15 years ago. Since then The National Institute of Standards and Technology guidelines have provided a consistent sense of security requirements that can be applied across an agency, he noted. He spoke Sept. 16 during a panel at a Data Center Optimization conference in Washington, D.C. sponsored by AFFIRM and the Government Information Technology Executive Council.

Data ownership is a big issue, especially because of the move toward service-oriented architecture, which decouples large applications and breaks business functions and processes into discrete services. The business owners are open to having a dialogue about how the amalgamation of information systems can save money, Hamilton said. But they still have concerns of ownership rights as data is segmented within virtual systems, he said.

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A two-year campaign that prompted the Department of Homeland Security to issue its first-ever emergency directive to agencies to shore up cyber defenses appears in part to have been an attempt to spy on U.S. government internet traffic.